I quite like being round there, And to be honest, I would call the Park Road area Dingle rather than Aigburth!

It is pleasant though and is very leafy; There is also a variation of side street housing too. Some are lengthy terraces (with a view of North Wales sometimes) and others are very leafy streets with large villa housing. The bad thing about that area is that the nearest Sayers is more or less in Dingle as it is round by Park Road. Eggy Vale has a good selection of shops and buses to the city, the airport and to Bootle via Queens Drive. So it is well placed for commuting.

The suburb was featured in "Watching" if anyone recalls. Malcolm and Brenda moved into a house which was owned by Bernard and Malcolms Aunt. Brenda found it to be very boreing. Something I don't know about!

A MASKED schoolboy gang went on a playground rampage, attacking fellow pupils at a Liverpool school.

The gang of teenage boys, wearing hoods and scarves over their faces, randomly set upon other youngsters at St Margaret’s High School in Aigburth.

Two boys were injured - one suffering rib injuries and the other facial injuries - and were taken to hospital after the incident last Monday.

A 16 year-old pupil, who witnessed the attack, said the gang, made up of up to 30 Year 11 pupils, launched unprovoked attacks against younger students.

The teenager, who asked not to be named, said: “It was during the lunch break. There were about 20 or 30 of them, all aged about 15 or 16.

“They put their hoods up on their jackets and put scarves up around their faces.

“Then they went around the main yard. It was completely random and the attacks were all on lads who were younger, about 13 or 14.

“They were all concentrated attacks, about eight of them on each lad.
Different ones were having a go on different people.

“They just seemed to be stamping on the lad’s heads. There were at least 10 lads attacked.

“Eventually they all dispersed.”

The two students taken to hospital were allowed home later the same day.
One has since returned to school and the other is expected to return in the near future.

Dr David Dennison, head teacher of the Aigburth Road school, confirmed an investigation was underway.

He said the incident involved “a handful of students” and parents had been spoken to.

He added: “Aggressive behaviour is totally unacceptable and there is no place in this school for students who assault others.

“All students have been informed that no ball games are allowed that might lead to accidental or deliberate injury.

“St Margaret's school has at the heart of its ethos the Christian belief that all individuals should be respected.

“The school has a strict discipline and behaviour policy and we expect all students who uphold this policy. As a result of our ethos, events like this are extremely rare and dealt with firmly should they occur.”

A spokeswoman for the North West Ambulance Service, said: “We were called to the school at 1.36pm to reports of an assault involving two children.

“One child had facial injuries and a second child had rib injuries.
“The injuries were caused in two separate incidents. Both were taken to Alder Hey Childrens’ Hospital.”

A spokeswoman for Merseyside Police said they were aware of two allegations of assault. IC Liverpool

Liverpool in Pictures/ YO! Liverpool has taken me over 10 years to develop and maintain.

My sister lived in Camden a while back, and i visited quite a lot. I think Lark Ln has a similar alternative/rustic/unwashed feel to it.

I live a 5-10 minute walk from Lark Ln too, we go there frequently; Maranto's is great for steak!

Thanks for that. Have you tried Que Pasa Cantina? Much better than Maranto's for food/atmosphere/music. I always associate Marantos with somewhere you take the entire extended family but in the end, as always, it's down to personal taste.

Anyway, the reason I queried Camden was because the borough is so large, containing places like Camden Town, Belsize Park, Hampstead, all very different. Because of the term 'alternative' I'm assuming you mean Camden Town. I'm now sifting through the main streets in my mind: Camden High Street, Parkway, Camden Road, Chalk Farm Road etc and none of them stikes me as being like Lark Lane.

Not sure I see Lark Lane as 'unwashed'! You do see a few unwashed people hanging about but less so now than a few years ago. The Camden Roads I mentioned above are heaving with London life and traffic (by comparison, Lark Lane is like a village High Street!). Poverty is much more apparent in Camden Town, too. Not many people are pushing the Big Issue on Lark Lane. I guess I didn't get the idea of a 'poor man's Camden' when overall people seem poorer in Camden Town than they do in the area around Lark Lane. A poor man's Hampstead - that works. Maybe that was the part of Camden you were getting at in the first place?

Lark Lane Sefton Park

This is a delightfully attractive area and well worth exploring for those who don't know it. I've always been puzzled as to how on earth it came to be classed as being in Aigburth when patently is never has been. Is it simply because Aigburth Rd is nearby? I've come to the conclusion it probably dates back to the time when the trams only went as far as Aigburth Vale but were labelled as travelling to Aigburth. Aigburth of course being a district of Garston township whose boundary was at Aigburth Vale.

With the development of Sefton Park in the 1870s, the naming of half the ring road as Aigburth Drive also probably added to the confusion. The building of Sefton Park led to the whole area, a subset of Toxteth Park, being called Sefton Park though Liverpool street directories still called the area Toxteth Park well into the mid 20th C. The naming of the area Sefton Park led to the new library built on Aigburth Rd being called Sefton Park library rather than say Aigburth Library as one might expect if the correct name for the area were Aigburth.

Later the local council wards were named after Sefton Park. These wards largely followed the Toxteth Park boundaries. Thus the dales streets area between Smithdown Road and Garmoyle Rd L15 in what many now call Wavertree was actually called Sefton Park simply because it was in the Sefton Park ward, a part of Toxteth Park.

One of the best guides to correct district names are Church of England Parish names as these have a legal status which can only be changed by Act of Parliament. So they tend to be correct !! Thus Christ Church Linnet Lane off Lark Lane L17 proudly states it's in Toxteth Park and not Aigburth. Similarly for St Agnes on nearby Ullet Rd L17 and the now demolished St Andrew on Normanton Rd L17 anhd quite close to Lark Lane

I wouldn't read too much into parish statutes! The catholic archdiocese of Liverpool contains Lanchashire, Cheshire and Greater Manchester within it. I guess we could argue that those places are spiritually a provence if Liverpool! (JOKE). Often in an attempt to curry legitimacy the church anchors itself in a pre-existing entity whether its Toxteth Park or Christmas (Yule). This doesn't mean that 'Toxteth Park' has any meaning beyond church affairs.

In the case of the area between Dingle Lane and Aigburth Vale, if local people don't say they live in Aigburth (or St Michaels, Fulwood Park, Sefton Park, Lark Lane area) they will say that they live in L17. There is no allegiance whatsoever to Toxteth or Toxteth Park. Many people know that Sefton Park is on the site of the area covered by Toxteth Park but the park is always referred to as Sefton Park! Toxteth Park was in no way a 'park' as we understand it!

Apart from benign neglect until recently by LCC, I think that part of the reason for this confusion is because there isn't really an academically rigorous history of Liverpool textbook (or series of textbooks). All the history books I have read have either been written by amateurs or published by the LEA in the form of a list of dates with a little bit of added information. The current '800th Birthday Book' is very much 'history to go' rather than rigorous in its analysis of how a city came into being and how it managed the tensions within and outside it.

The amateur historians make a great contribution and I value it. The downside for me is that, for example in terms of twentieth century history, the tendency is to over sentimentalise events or changes in the city. If that is reigned in, the danger then is often one of an over-reliance on anecdotalism, or a history that is the product of other history books rather than a critical analysis of source documents. Often the focus is on what happened without much of an analysis of why it happened. Currently it seems to me that there is a tendency to present the story of the north end of the city as if it reflected the city as a whole. It doesn't. For example, and just for argument's sake, if South Liverpool were detached from the rest of Liverpool, it would function as an average similar sized locality within England,with similar levels of deprivation. Once North Liverpool is added on the city shoots up towards the top of the list of most deprived English cities. The differences between the two halves (an over-simplification) of the city isn't reflected in recent history books. Anyway that's another story!

Will the real Aigburth reveal itself

Originally Posted by Jericho

In the case of the area between Dingle Lane and Aigburth Vale, if local people don't say they live in Aigburth (or St Michaels, Fulwood Park, Sefton Park, Lark Lane area) they will say that they live in L17. There is no allegiance whatsoever to Toxteth or Toxteth Park. Many people know that Sefton Park is on the site of the area covered by Toxteth Park but the park is always referred to as Sefton Park! Toxteth Park was in no way a 'park' as we understand it!

I still don't really understand how the St Michael's/ Lark Lane area came to be classed as Aigburth when patently it never has been which was the main point of my query. Estate agents of course class all of L17 as Aigburth these days including Greenbank Drive by Smithdown Rd, I noticed recently. Some one of the list suggested the locals call the St Michael's/ Lark Lane area Aigburth out of snobbery but it must be more than that. How did a major place name error become common place amongst the population. I suugested simply it became associated as Aigburth simply by the old signs on the trams. There may be another explanation.

I attach an interesting road sign showing Aigburth as being 2 1/4 miles ( correctly) from the junction of Sefton park Rd with Ullet Rd. This of course takes you to roughly Jericho Lane/ Ashfield Rd which is the correct start of the real Aigburth which was of course a district within the Garston township

I think that there has been leakage between postcode and district with everyone who lives in L17 saying that they live in Aigburth. One way to manage this would be to move the signs for Aigburth from Aigburth Vale to the beginning of Aigburth Road where most people in this area regard it as starting. People from L8 often accuse people who live in the area between Dingle Lane and Aigburth Vale as saying they live in 'Aigburth' for snobbish reasons. That may be part of it. An L17 postcode can increase the value of your house by a considerable bit. A terraced house in somwhere like Gwendoline Street, L8 can be worth up to 100K less than a similar terrace in Belgrave Road, L17. At the turn of the century the St Michael's area was the most affluent in the entire country and Fulwood Park is classier than anything Aigburth proper has to offer, and then when you take the houses around Sefton Park and in the area between Lark Lane and Ullet Road, it's Aigburth proper that risks being shown up as wanting. Don't lets forget, whilst were at it, that the shops/ restaurants of Aigburth Road/Lark Lane north of Aigburth vale are much, much better than anything south of it (there isn't that much in comparison!). When people think of Aigburth as 'trendy', they are not thinking of the area south of Aigburth Vale (because it isn't).

So just where is Aigburth? Is it the suburb south of Aigburth Vale or is it the soul of South Liverpool north of this area? Is it a bit of both?

Move the signs LCC! Map the district onto the psychological reality that is Aigburth!

Aigburth Hall was in Aigburth Hall Avenue, near the Cricket Ground.
Presumably Aigburth Vale is part of Aigburth.
Apart from that it's always been difficult to define where Aigburth is (or was).

It could be argued that a street sign directing you to somewhere would take you to the centre of that place.

There are different types of boundaries:
Parish, Municipal, Parliamentary, Historical, Snobbish, etc., that it's practically impossible to define them.
I'll stick with history, because I know where Toxteth Park is.

It was the Riots of 1981 that gave Toxteth a bad name, and the media resurrected the name that Scousers didn't use.
But the original Toxteth Park was so large that it's only natural that it's been sub-divided.
And it was created as a park for pleasure, but it wasn't a public park, and was probably never used much for hunting deer, with which it was stocked.

Aigburth Hall was in Aigburth Hall Avenue, near the Cricket Ground.
Presumably Aigburth Vale is part of Aigburth.
Apart from that it's always been difficult to define where Aigburth is (or was).

It could be argued that a street sign directing you to somewhere would take you to the centre of that place.

There are different types of boundaries:
Parish, Municipal, Parliamentary, Historical, Snobbish, etc., that it's practically impossible to define them.
I'll stick with history, because I know where Toxteth Park is.

It was the Riots of 1981 that gave Toxteth a bad name, and the media resurrected the name that Scousers didn't use.
But the original Toxteth Park was so large that it's only natural that it's been sub-divided.
And it was created as a park for pleasure, but it wasn't a public park, and was probably never used much for hunting deer, with which it was stocked.

Hi Philip et al.

I lived at 76 Aigburth Hall Avenue nearly opposite the shops and we always thought of it as Mossley Hill. Riversdale Road, the extension of Aigburth Hall Avenue, on the opposite side of Aigburth Road, which runs down toward the Mersey is where the Maybricks lived at 7 Riversdale Road.

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As I noted in the James Maybrick thread, Florence Maybrick in her autobiography, My Lost Fifteen Years, actually calls the place where she lived "Aigwerth" rather than "Aigburth" although of course that could have been a typo in the book. As a child, I had always thought of the cricket ground as the Aigburth cricket ground. As Taffy said, Aigburth is "a district of Garston township whose boundary was at Aigburth Vale."

With respect, Philip, I am not sure we can say for sure how much hunting went on in Toxteth Park. If the park was purposely stocked with deer, I should think there was quite a bit, although I am not sure there are any records. Maybe someone else can clarify where there might be any records on the numbers of deer hunted.

With respect, Philip, I am not sure we can say for sure how much hunting went on in Toxteth Park. If the park was purposely stocked with deer, I should think there was quite a bit, although I am not sure there are any records. Maybe someone else can clarify where there might be any records on the numbers of deer hunted.

Chris

With respect, Chris, I think we can be quite sure that Toxteth Park was seldom used for hunting.
King John set it up for himself, and it is known that he hardly ever visited it.
And to ask for records of how many deer were hunted - that's going a bit too far!

With respect, Chris, I think we can be quite sure that Toxteth Park was seldom used for hunting.
King John set it up for himself, and it is known that he hardly ever visited it.
And to ask for records of how many deer were hunted - that's going a bit too far!

Well not really, Philip, bureaucracy goes back a long way. As you may know, I am a War of 1812 historian and one of the things that startled me is how bureaucratic things were back then, with standardized forms for military or prison purposes, and so on. We recently ran a series of articles in Ripperologist on the English coroners system and one of the things the coroners had to do was to account for what happened to whales and other "royal fish." In as much as there were (I assume) gamekeepers to take care of a royal preserve such as Toxteth Park, it could be that such records still exist somewhere.

I think it's called Aigburth and St Michael's Cricket Club. I suppose with the Liverpool Cricket Club in the real Aigburth, they had to tag Aigburth onto the St Michael's name.

It is still just listed as Aigburth Cricket club, I just googled it.
The reason I remember it is that it was one of the trick questions in the Hackney carriage knowledge test when it was under the control of the police back in the early 60's.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.
Winston Churchill